For rich Brazilians, real estate bargains

New York is teeming with Brazilian tourists, and many of them, flush with cash from a booming economy back home, are snapping up their own pieces of Manhattan.

Marcos Cohen, a Brazilian broker at Prudential Douglas Elliman, said he had closed more than 15 deals over the past two years for Brazilians paying from $5 million to more than $15 million for Manhattan apartments.

"Having an apartment in New York was a dream of my husband since he was a little boy," said Dominique Benz, 35, whose husband works at a Sao Paulo investment fund. "It is his gift at the end of working so hard to be able to buy."

Last year, the couple bought two adjoining apartments at the Caledonia condominium tower in the Chelsea neighborhood. They planned to join them, creating a 260-square-meter deck - one of the largest private outdoor spaces downtown.

The couple paid a combined $4.1 million for the apartments, with about 200 square meters of interior space in all.

Ms. Benz said she is happy to have a place to take her three children a few months out of the year where they can ride bicycles without the fear of kidnappings many feel back home.

They shouldn't have any trouble finding fellow Brazilians to invite over. Already, 8 of the 181 condo units in their building have been bought by fellow countrymen, part of a Brazilian buying spree in New York that shows no sign of slowing.

Many of the Brazilian buyers are professionals in their 30s and 40s, often tied to commodities or the finance sector, which has made many rich from a flurry of I.P.O.'s in recent years.

Brazilians favor addresses along Central Park on the Upper East Side or in Midtown near Lincoln Center, where many have season tickets, brokers say. Many also look downtown at buildings with concierge services.

Brazilians often bring in their own architects and interior designers, like Fernanda Marques, a Sao Paulo-based architect well known in Brazil.

Some are choosing the design firm of the musician Lenny Kravitz, who is popular among Brazilians.

It has become cheaper for Brazilians to buy apartments in Miami than in parts of Rio de Janeiro. Apartment prices there are soaring ahead of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and the 2016 Rio Olympics. From April to October of last year, per-square-meter prices rose by more than 20 percent in Rio's wealthier areas, according to Ibope Inteligencia, a Brazilian research company.

"Even New York can be seen as a bargain compared to Rio," Mr. Cohen said.

These are heady days for Brazilians. Their economy is now the sixth-largest in the world. Reforms of the banking system and much lower inflation have given the economy stability. High commodity prices and demand from China have kept the money flowing.

Mr. Cohen boldly approached President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil at the French restaurant Le Bernardin in September and complimented her on the government's success. "I said, 'Listen, Mrs. President, I never thought I would live to see how much people respect the Brazilians on Fifth Avenue.'"

Americans eager to do real estate deals with Brazilians are making more frequent trips to Brazil and stepping up their marketing efforts there.

With so many Brazilian tourists and part-time residents in Miami and New York, getaways can feel like homecomings. Daniela Sassoun, a Brazilian broker at the Corcoran Group, said she was buying shoes in Bergdorf-Goodman last year and heard familiar accents. "I closed my eyes and thought I was in Brazil again," she said.

For Jeisa Chiminazzo, 26, a Brazilian model who bought a two-bedroom loft in the TriBeCa neighborhood in 2009 for $1.65 million, the Brazilian invasion has at least one downside. "If you want to gossip a little bit you can't gossip in Portuguese anymore," she said, "because you will have a Brazilian bump into you."

The New York Times